We shall not attempt to elude the task that is imposed upon us. Not only should we thereby emasculate and degrade our ideas, and the facts themselves, but the actual state of the world compels us frankly to adopt as law this unquestionable alliance between philosophy and history. This conjunction is precisely one of the features, if not the main and essential feature, of our age. We are called upon to study, and to give simultaneous weight to science and reality, to theory and practice, to right and fact. In previous times, these two powers have lived apart: the world was accustomed to behold scientific theory and practice take different routes, without acknowledging each other, or at least without forming a union. And when doctrines or general ideas operated upon events, and stirred up the world, they have succeeded in doing so only by the impulsion of fanaticism. The sway over human societies, and the direction of their affairs, have hitherto been divided between two sorts of influences: on the one hand, the believers, the men of general ideas and of principles, the fanatics; on the other, men strangers to all rational principle, making circumstances their only rule of conduct, practicians, libertines, as the seventeenth century called them. This state of things has now ceased; neither the fanatics nor the libertines can any longer wield predominance. In order to govern and have influence amongst men at present, it is necessary to ascertain and comprehend both general ideas and circumstances; it is necessary to have the capacity to keep count of principles and facts, to respect truth and expediency, and to avoid as well the blind presumption of the fanatics, as the insensate disdain of the libertines. The development of the human mind and of the social state has conducted us to this point: on the one hand, the human understanding, elevated and unshackled, has a clearer conception of the entirety of things, can direct its scrutiny to all questions, and bring everything that has being into its combinations; on the other hand, society is brought to that state of advancement that it can bear testing by the application of truth; and facts may be supported by appeal to principles, without inspiring, by such comparison, an overwhelming discouragement or disgust, in spite of their great imperfection. Therefore, by passing, as occasions arise, from the examination of circumstances to that of ideas, from an exposition of facts to an inquiry into theories, I shall only follow the natural tendency, the tone and the demands of our age. Perhaps, also, there is an additional reason in favour of this method, derived from the actual disposition of men's minds. For some time past, a decided taste, I will even say a sort of predilection, for facts, for the practical point of view and the positive side of human affairs, has manifested itself amongst us. We have been so much a prey to the despotism of general ideas and theories,